


Baby, We Were Born This Way

by pretendimstraight



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, M/M, Reference Transphobia, Steve and Billy cuddle and talk about Steve's Past, Steve's parents are mentioned, first crushes, this is actually way softer than the tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretendimstraight/pseuds/pretendimstraight
Summary: What if Billy wasn't Steve's first introduction to the world of the LGBT??aka-Steve's first crush was on a trans boy and he tells Billy about it.





	Baby, We Were Born This Way

**Author's Note:**

> absolutely self-indulgent, and kinda therapeutic for me, so be gentle lmao. 
> 
> happy pride month guys! i hope you’re doing good out there, and remember that whether you’re out and accepted or not, you’re important and valid, and i love you!

 

“Hey Stevie,” Billy’s voice was soft and teasing as they laid together on his bed, “Who was the first girl you ever liked? Were you and Tommy supposed to be sharing Carol this whole time, or something?” 

Steve snorted and thought back. It wasn’t hard to remember her, but it almost felt wrong now to think about it.

“Did good, ol’ Tommy boy stole her from you or something?” Billy asked, pinching Steve in his side and dodging a weak punch to the shoulder before grabbing his hand loosely, squeezing it once as if to urge him on, “But seriously, I wanna know babe.”

Steve smiled at him, hoping that Billy couldn’t see any of the pain in his eyes at thought of her.

“It was when I was in elementary school, actually,” Steve started, staring off into space and losing himself in the memory.

 

* * *

 

The first crush on a girl that Steve can remember having was when he was in first grade. It was on a cute little one named Ashley. 

She had brown hair that was up in long pigtails more often than not, and she had these blue eyes that made him feel like he was watching a storm start to gather in the sky. She liked to wear pants, just like him, not skirts or dresses like Carol or Michelle or Kim. She was fast, the fastest girl in their grade. She beat him in a race when they were gym class one day and that’s how he knew he was in love.

He had tried to buy her candy, and toys since he had met here, but she wasn’t ever interested. She’d talk to him all the time, but all of the things that he’d seen in movies that boys did to get girls to like them hadn’t seemed to work on her. She liked him as a friend, and by the time third grade came around, other than Tommy, she was his bestest friend. At recess, they ran around, and played on the monkey bars together, hooting and hollering and laughing their playtimes away.

One day, the two of them were sitting in their art class together. They were working on a drawing to fill up with things that they wanted to do over summer. Their last day was only two more weeks away and they were excited to go swimming and hang out over the summer, away from teachers and books.

Steve’s paper was filled with doodles of a mom and a dad, each holding a little boy’s hand as they went hiking or looked at flowers. Ashley told him that his flowers look really pretty and he blushed when he thanked her. He looked over at her drawing and saw that it was supposed to be her jumping to a pool under a sunny sky. He watched her draw shorts on the stick figure so that it looked like his bathing suit. “Hey, that’s a boy bathing suit! I have a blue one that looks just like that.” 

She shook her head and made a face like she had eaten something yucky and sour, “I wish I could wear a bathing suit like that,” she looked at Steve with a sad look in her eye, “My bathing suit makes me feel ugly.”

“I’m sure you look really good in it,” Steve said, trying to reassure her with a wink that didn’t come out quite right, his dad had left for work again before teaching him how to do it the good way.

“Thanks, Stevie,” She muttered, starting to draw hair on her stick figure version of herself.

The stick figure had her color eyes, pretty and blue, but not the same pigtails that Steve was used to seeing on her, so he felt a need to point that out as well. “Where’d all your hair go? Are you pretending that it all fell off, or somethin’?” he asked, finishing up a doodle on his own paper of him and Ashley playing catch in a yard.

She had pigtails in his picture. He smiled down at it proudly.

He was startled away from his drawing when Ashley groaned, reaching over his arm to cross out her pigtails with an ugly scribble of black on either side of her drawn head. “What’d you do that for?” He whined, glaring over at her for the first time ever.

“My hair is yucky, and long Stevie,” She said, sounding kinda angry and kinda sad, “I wish it could be short like yours.”

Steve got up out of his chair, young, dumb and fuming, and ran to grab to the grown-up pair of scissors that their teacher had on her desk. Ashley went back to drawing, and he was so mad. She ruined his drawing. He was gonna show it to his mom and she was gonna tell him how proud she was of him for once. He walked back over to their table and stood behind her.

“You wish your hair was short like mine?” He asked, tugging one of her pigtails as she sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, I wish I looked like you,” She said, and he snorted, sounding as mean and bitter as an eight-year-old could.

“Fine,” He spat out, and before she could turn to ask him what he meant by that, he snipped off one of her pigtails right below her fuzzy pink hairband.

She gasped and reached up but he ran around to her other side and quickly cut off her other pigtail too. His cut wasn’t so neat this time, and it snapped the band this time. He stood there smirking, kicking at the wasted hair at his feet as he watched her run her hair through her now messy, short hair. 

One side was shorter than the other, parts were sticking straight up while others fell across her head in disarray. Steve say back in his seat smugly, coloring the last of his flowers and saying a pointed “You’re welcome.”

He looked over to find tears in her eyes, and suddenly he panicked. He didn’t mean to make her cry, he just wanted to do something. She made him mad, and hurt his feelings so he wanted to do something about the sting in his eyes other than cry. He watched a tear roll down her cheek, as Ms. Caulder yanked him out of his seat by his shirt’s collar, scolding and grumbling about having to call home. 

“I’m so sorry, Ashley! I--” He fought to get back to her side but Ms. Caulder had an iron grip, “I didn’t mean to, please don’t be hate me!”

He watched her shoulders shake as Ms. C. dragged him towards the door but as his view changed, he saw a smile on her face. She was still running her fingers through her hair, and he could hear her sniffling but she was smiling so big, bigger than he’s ever seen her do before. She looked up and her wet, pretty blue eyes met his from across the room and his heart raced as fast as it had sunk previously. 

Just as he was yanked out of the room he heard her soft, broken up voice call out to him, “Thank you, Steve.”

That was his first suspension too. The nanny his parents had hired wasn’t very happy about having to deal with him for even longer than usual for a few days. 

His parents didn’t care enough as they probably should have, just told him they were disappointed when they found out and called the school to make sure that he was still moving on to fourth grade.

When he went back, he walked into his classroom with flowers that he pulled out of the school’s garden all by himself. They were pretty and pink like the ones that he drew, and he wanted to give them to Ashley, but he couldn’t find her. Tommy told him that her dad came to pick her up from school that very same day and she cleaned out her cubby.

Steve threw the flowers in the trash and pouted for the rest of the week, refusing to go out for recess for the rest of the school year. 

On his last day he took his drawing home and showed his nanny, she pat him on the back and told him that she better not find it on the floor of his room or else it was gonna go into the trash. He ran up the stairs and put in an old shoebox where he kept all of the things he never wanted to lose, like the old baseball his Nonna bought him and the bowtie his daddy tied for him when they invited Steve to go along on one of his trips one time.

 

* * *

 

 

Billy didn’t say anything for a while, staying quiet at Steve told his story to Billy. Steve could feel tears in his eyes at the memory, tears that he knew Billy couldn’t possibly understand but he was grateful that he didn’t point them out.

“So, whatever happened to her?” Billy asked, rubbing his hand over Steve’s hand soothingly.

“I never saw her again,” Steve answered, he knew voice sounded as though there was more that he wasn’t saying, but again, Billy didn’t push.

Steve really loves Billy a lot. He’s a really good boyfriend.

“Well, was I your first ‘boy’ crush?” Billy asked, smirking a bit as if his question was aimed more to lighten the mood. 

Steve shook his head with a small smile on his face, and Billy looked genuinely confused for a moment.

“But I thought--”

“You were the first boy I ever wanted to be with, not the first boy that I ever had a crush on, babe,” Steve said plainly, leaning his head over to kiss Billy’s cheek.

“Awh shucks, good to know there was a distinction,” Billy said, looking over and winking his way, “Tell me. Who was the lucky fella?”

Steve sighed, remembering the first time he saw the lucky fella in question.

 

* * *

 

 

He was just starting out in his senior year of High School, before Billy had even crashed his way into his life, and he struggling to get through Shakespeare in his English class. He was distracted trying to ignore the butterflies in his stomach leftover from seeing Nancy at her locker and the phantom pain in his heart from catching her stare off toward Jonathan. Mr. Crawford called on him to answer some question that he wasn’t even paying attention to, and he butchered his way through an answer.

He was sure he sounded at least a quarter right, but then he heard it. Someone sighing from a few seats to his left. He turned to look at them but they were looking down at their book so all he could see was short brown hair. The sigh had sounded so familiar, it shocked him.

“Does someone else in the class have something to say?” Mr. Crawford said, crossing his arms over his chest and glancing around the room.

“It’s just that,” someone cleared their throat to make their voice deeper, and the person with short brown hair sat up, leaving Steve speechless, “Well, I think that Hamlet did love Ophelia at one point. He loved her a lot, but he also loved himself with all of his heart at the same exact time. He was a man on a mission, a man filled with pain and grief. He couldn’t handle the variety of emotions that he was feeling, so he lashed out at her because he was hurting.”

The other student looked up finally, and a set of stormy blue eyes met Steve’s from across the room before they continued to speak, “Hamlet loved Ophelia, even in his revenge-induced madness and after her death. He was selfish, yes sir, he was, but he still loved her, and he didn’t want to see her get hurt because of him, so he hurt her first.”

“Very well put, Miss. Vulcano--” Mr. Crawford said to her, and Steve had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping.

“Please, call me Ash,” she looked away from Steve to wink up at Mr. Crawford and shoot playful finger guns, “It’s like my nickname.” 

It’s not a nickname that Steve used to call her, but he does guess that people can get new nicknames in the span of eight years or so.

Mr. Crawford nodded, “Ash it is then, and thank you for your insight into the question.”

He went on to babble some more about the symbolism of Ophelia’s death, but Steve had even more trouble paying attention then he had before. He kept turning back to catch her eye, hoping to tell her everything he was thinking with his gaze alone, but she wouldn’t look up.

The bell rang and it was the end of the day, but she was up and out into the hallway before Steve could even get close. He jogged down the hallway and caught a glance of her hair turning down a corner to go towards a fire exit the school had. She was purposely trying to evade him, but he couldn’t bear to watch her get away again. He ran out the gym exit and snuck to where the fire exit would be letting out.

As he got closer he heard a man’s voice talking in a low angry voice, and Steve felt his blood pump fast as he heard Ash’s voice talking back to him. He started to prep himself for a fight in her honor, but as he got closer he started to be able to hear what they were saying.

“Couldn’t you just pick me up from school without the condescending attitude for once, dad?”

Steve could hear the mean, Ash’s dad apparently, scoff at what she said, “Couldn’t you just act like a good little girl for once, Ashley?”

“It’s Ash, dad,” It sounded like she was speaking through grit teeth, “And I told you that I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m a boy--”

She’s a _boy?_

Whatever she was saying was cut off by the sound the harsh sound of skin on skin, and Steve could hear a sharp intake of breath. Ash’s dad laughed, it sounded low and terrifying, and it made Steve’s blood boil. 

“See you can’t even take a little slap like a man, can you? How many times do I have to remind you, you’re just a prissy, confused little girl.” the man’s voice sounded venomous, the way Steve imagined that Satan’s must have sounded when he tricked Eve into eating that apple. 

He was about to intervene when he heard Tommy call his name, the other boy was leaving the same gym exit that Steve had and was now waving him over, shouting something about how he was a “pussy” and asking if he was “too much of a bitch now to make it to basketball practice.” He quickly walked toward him, trying to shut him up before he made the situation that much worse for Ash. When he turned around he caught a glance of an old, beat up car driving away and he hoped that this wouldn’t be like third grade all over again.

He laid in bed that night, his house quiet and empty since he was old enough to not need a nanny anymore, and thought about the little girl in Ms. Caulder’s class whose life he thought he had ruined all those years ago and tried not to dwell on the silence filling his house. 

Sometime around midnight, Steve heard a knock at his front door. The sound echoed through the house in a way that had his skin breaking into goosebumps. He grabbed his bat and hurried down the stair, expecting Jonathan or Nancy to be waiting there on the other side to tell him that the monsters are back and they need to kill another one all over again. He took a deep breath to steel himself before opening the door, only to find Ash staring back at him. One of her- no, his eyes seemed to be swollen shut, and he was glancing from side to side.

“Hey pal,” he whispered, his voice sounding high pitched and broken, “Can I ask you a favor?”

Steve ushered him in and towards the couch, shutting and locking the door behind them as he ran to the kitchen to grab a frozen bag of peas. As he walked back towards the living room, he saw him rearranging his pink v-neck before trying to tug his hoodie back on. Steve held the peas out towards him and smiled softly, trying to seem calm and reassuring.

“Thanks, man,” Ash said, specifically trying to make his voice sound deeper like he had done earlier that day in class, “Ain’t it funny that you still live in this same, big old house like when we were kids?”

“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” Steve muttered, moving to sit on the other side of the couch next to him.

He laughed, reaching up to place the bag on his eye and wincing, “God, I remember how much you hated it here, Steve.”

Hearing Ash say his name with the same fondness that Ashley used to made him feel weird, like the butterflies that Nancy gives him were mixed with that phantom pain from earlier but there was something else to it as well. Something more, and deeper than those two was mixed in. The blue in his uninjured eye was drawing him in, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to sit down and doodle flowers again. Like things had never changed.

“I never told you that I hated it here,” He said back, not looking away even as Ash shook his head with a tiny smirk.

“You told me all the time that being inside your house made you feel sad, like you were always alone,” his deeper voice seemed more natural when he was talking quieter and it almost made Steve feel flustered, which confused him.

He didn’t understand why he liked it so much. He wanted to tell himself that it was just because he knew that it was Ashley’s voice, just disguised, but Ash sounded nothing like the little girl that stole Steve’s heart back in elementary school.

“Where’d you go?” Steve whispered, looking down at his feet, “That day I got in trouble for your hair.”

Ash sighed, and glanced towards the door worriedly, as if he was worried someone was going to bust in any second, “My dad was real pissed when the school called. First at you, for doing it in the first place. Then at me, because I liked it. He wanted to go find me some wig and I yelled at him saying that I liked it. I asked him if I could be his little boy instead since I finally looked like one.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Steve started but Ash shook his head.

“Don’t be. You helped me realize who I was, Steve, and how I could be more comfortable in the body I was trapped in.“

“Trapped in?” Steve repeated, confused.

Ash took the peas away from his eye and sighed again, leaning back on the couch and looking up at the ceiling. “This might sound weird, and confusing, but I’m--” he paused, took a deep breath and closed his eyes tight as though he was bracing for something, “I’m actually a boy. I know that I might look like a girl and you met me as ‘Ashley’ and what not, but I was never comfortable like that, being her. I was never supposed to be a girl, I think.”

He stopped talking, keeping his eyes squeezed shut, while Steve tried to take in what he heard the correct way.

He’d never heard of that before, being born in the wrong body. He’s always been completely sure of his masculinity, and every girl he’s ever met seemed just fine being a girl. Sure, some of them acted a bit ‘boyish’ sometimes, but that was normal, he thought. He couldn’t imagine feeling stuck like that, in a body that didn’t even feel like yours. 

“How long have you known?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet and soft to seem as non-threatening as he could, “That you were a boy, I mean.”

Ash looked at him incredulously, the swelling around his injured eye starting to go down a bit now thanks to the peas. Steve considered running to grab him some painkillers, that thing must hurt like a bitch, but decided that then was not a good time. 

“So you- you don’t think I’m sick or anything like that? You believe me?” Ash asked quietly, he was leaning closer towards Steve and it made him feel flustered again for reasons he couldn’t name.

“I think that I don’t really understand it, but I also think that that makes sense and I don’t really have to understand it because I’m not you,” Steve said, scooting closer to Ash to put a hand on his shoulder and ignoring the way the contact made him feel nostalgic and warm, “You’re not sick, man. You’re just you.”

Ash laughed suddenly, light and airy like it was pushed out of him. “You’re somethin’ else, y’know that Stevie?”

Steve felt the tips of his ears warm up at the old nickname, and the new feelings that hearing it sent through him. “So I’ve been told,” he muttered, ducking away from the eye contact before Ash read something in his gaze that he didn’t mean to show.

Ash continued laughing for a few more minutes, tears cascading down his cheeks one by one in a way that Steve just knew was unintended, so he didn’t comment on it. Finally, Ash cleared his throat and stared out towards Steve’s pool. “I’ve known that I wasn’t comfortable with me since forever, but I didn’t know exactly what it was until that day when you cut my hair.”

“Really?” Steve asked, scratching the back of my neck, “You’ve felt like that for this long?”

“Yeah, it kinda sucks,” Ash said, shaking his head softly and glancing over at Steve, “My old man hates it, but I think he likes having a ‘son’ that he could beat up on.”

“That’s horrible,” Steve muttered, immediately feeling like an idiot that he even bothered saying it out loud; of course Ash knew it was horrible, it was his life that they were talking about.

“Yeah, you’re not wrong about that,” Ash said, small smile falling into something more serious after a moment, “Which takes me back to that favor. Your family is still loaded right?”

Steve nodded, already getting up to go to the safe in his father office with some of his extra cash in it. “How much do you need?”

 

* * *

 

 

“And so I gave him like five hundred bucks, and breakfast that next morning and then he was off to who knows where,” Steve said, twirling a lock of blonde hair around his fingers.

“You didn’t get freaky with him or anything?” Billy asked, smirking over at him and Steve playfully tugged on the hair in his hand.

“No, asshole, I was in a relationship and he came to me for help as a friend,” Steve said, voice laced with faux exasperation, “Besides, I doubt he would feel really comfortable with that anyway.”

Billy seemed to ponder on that for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah you’re probably right,” he said, “So whatever happened to him? Where did he go?” 

“I’m not really sure,” Steve said, trying not to dwell on the memory of Ash kissing his cheek before heading out that morning too hard, “He sent me a letter a few months ago but I never actually checked the address or whatever. Apparently, he and some girl moved in together.”

“Sounds pretty serious,” Billy muttered, staring at Steve with one of his soft, “I-am-so-in-love-with-you-but-I-don’t-know-how-to-tell-you-that” looks into his gaze.

“Yeah,” Steve said, “I’m pretty sure they even got a cat or something.”

“I guess you missed your chance to move in with your true love and adopt some cat,” Billy said, soft gaze replaced with something more playful and mischievous, “Or something.”

Steve cuddled closer to his boyfriend’s side, and looked up at him, “I always saw myself as more of a dog person anyway,” He said, winking at Billy pointedly.

Billy beamed at him and barked like a dog a few times before leaning down to kiss his forehead. Steve laughed at how much of a goof Billy could be, but also made himself more comfortable and laid his head on his chest.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence between them, Billy cleared his throat. “I think I wouldn’t mind meeting this Ash guy, we should set something up sometime,” he said, not making eye contact when Steve sat up to look at him, “Sounds like me and him could have shit in common and what not.”

Steve thought about everything Billy had been through in his past, what with his father trying to beat the ‘gay’ out of him just like Ash’s father tried to beat the ‘boy’ out of Ash. He thought of the look Ash used to get in his eye before putting a tack on their teacher’s chair and compared it to the one in Billy’s eye whenever he taunted Steve before they were even together. He remembered the way the blue in Ash’s eyes reminded him of a storm and the crackle of energy that comes with it, and the way Billy’s reminded him of a clear sky on a beautiful day. 

He smiled at the way that he believed both of them to be the strongest people he has ever met for always being true to themselves, no matter the consequences, and how he adored both of them respectively for it.

“Yeah,” Steve said, rearranging himself so that his body was covering Billy’s and brushing their noses together, “I think I wouldn’t mind that either.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey there, guys! it's me, your ol' pal @pretendimstraight on both Tumblr and ao3  
> I hope you enjoyed this, and you should check me out on Tumblr sometime if you did!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (also this is absolutely me coming out to you all as a trans boy, as well so thanks for reading down this far, and I hope that any other transgender harringrove stans out there know that both Steve and Billy would accept you as you, no matter what!!)


End file.
